


Remember

by pinstripedJackalope



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Drug Abuse, Humanstuck, Trauma
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-05-12
Updated: 2014-05-12
Packaged: 2018-01-24 11:16:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,008
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1603184
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pinstripedJackalope/pseuds/pinstripedJackalope
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The drug trade is a lucrative business, but that isn't why Gamzee does it.  It has more to do with getting the fix that keeps the memories at bay.  When he gets hit by a car he has to come to terms with the fact that whether or not he wants it, he's getting help for the pain.</p><p>It’s nothing, compared to what could be.  Which is still nothing compared to what has been.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Veterinarian's Van

Your name is Gamzee Makara, and you are flying.  A second ago you were on your bike, you’re all up and motherfucking sure of it, because you remember feeling your hair whipping back from your face like it does when you’re ridin’.  You don’t know if you were peddling or not, but that’s okay, because you were moving.  But that was so long ago now.  Now you’ve up and taken to the air.  It’s a miracle, the way your heels are all up floating behind you.  It feels like a special kind of weightless, a smooth silky wasteland of gold clouds, and for an instant you know that you’ll never land.

Until you do, and it comes so suddenly that while you’re laying there on your back, the breath knocked clean out of you, you just start to giggle.  You can hardly get the laughter out because your lungs are all up and crumpled inside you, and the world is swimming so much around you that you’re convinced you’re underwater.  How miraculous.  You’ve always wanted to learn how to swim.  Kurloz used to say that he would up and teach you one day.  You cough, and there is an uncomfortable pinch somewhere deep in your chest, but you quickly lose track of it underneath this big wave of fuzzy calm.  You don’t mind being on the ground.  Kurloz always was a good teacher.  Maybe now is a good time to just nod off…

But someone is standing above you, a hand pressed rather insistently on your shoulder.

“Kid.  Jesus christ, kid, what fantasy world are you living in?  You might be the dumbest person I’ve ever met if riding your bike out into an intersection and forgetting that all the rust-licking-middle-class rush hour cars exist like they would just bounce off of your bloated body is what you do on an average weekday.  You just caused an accident, you dim-witted meat sack.  Did you even realize that you were heading out into four lanes of traffic?  You know what, don’t even answer.  Just stay where you are.  Someone called an ambulance.  I just hope that in your eternal stupidity you know what that is.”

You surface from under the wave, your head a little too blurry.  You don’t know the guy hanging over you--he’s loud, and you would have thought he was bigger from the big way he’s shouting in your ear.  Instead he’s a stout little guy, wide shoulders, big hands that must have taken him half a lifetime to grow into.  He reminds you of your dad.  You tilt your head a bit at him and smile, still unsure what he’s going on about.

That’s when you spot your bike, laying beside him.  The back wheel is all up and crooked looking like a tooth that’s been trying to fall out.  You wonder how you got from there to here--funny that you didn’t notice all that business of falling off or anything.  It happens a lot, though, so you don’t really think about it.  Not until you realize that a little further along behind your bike is a car.  Is two cars.  Two cars, and they’re all pressed up together like they’re kissing--or maybe not so gentle, because there are sirens and alarms and screams and suddenly you feel wide awake.

“Fucking hell,” says the guy, trying to hold you back.  “Shitty little punk, just keep still before you hurt yourself, all right?”

You ignore the stubby little man’s concern and try to find your feet, and in doing so you up and find that maybe you aren’t as all there as you think you are.  You get vertical by some miracle.  You can’t even feel anything below the knees, and you up and trip over your bike on your way to the first car.  It’s a big motherfucker, a van, but you can’t read the writing on the door because the side of it is resting against your cheek like a flush pillow, and man, you are way too high.

You get yourself all up to the window, and you find a motherfucker all curled over the wheel, nearly hugging it.  He’s worrying at one side of his mohawk, rubbing at some skin that is going to be bruising up nicely real soon, all muttering to himself like he’s trying to feel the situation out.  You see that his face is deathly pale, and underneath the numbness you feel a great tug of shame as you listen in on his whimsy, all quiet like he’s talking to no one but himself.  “...Well, uh… shit, at least there were no animals in the back, uh… wow… where, uh, did that guy even come from…?”

“Hey Motherfucker,” you say aloud, touching his shoulder.  Your voice can’t seem to keep up a normal rhythm of tones or volumes, never has, and that makes you smile because you know your own voice inside and out.  You feel better as you talk, your normal voice growing stronger again, lulling you.  You like to talk just because it means you’re up and saying something to another person--you don’t like the feeling you get when you aren’t talking, like you’re separated from everything, like you are empty air all alone in the stratosphere.

“I… uh… wow, uh, I didn’t know that car crashes would, uh, hurt this much…”  After a moment he raises his eye globes up to you, and they widen about as far as they can go.  “Shit, you’re the, uh, biker!  Aw man, are you okay?  You were, uh, just all of a sudden in front of the van and I guess I didn’t swerve in time--”

“Nah, nah, motherfucker, don’t you get your worry on like that.  Are you all up and okay?”

“I, uh… well to be honest… I don’t really know.”  His big brown eyes float up and you find yourself staring down at him as a great big ball of something the consistency of lead drops in your stomach.  “I’m so, uh, so sorry that I hit you…”

Your heart feels so torn up, and your chest is starting to ache, and you want to give him a big old hug and tell him that it doesn’t matter none, but before you can get your arms through the open space in the window someone starts tugging you backwards by the ear.  You smile back at the motherfucker in the car, to keep him reminded that everything is alright, as the nubby man sits you down on the curb.  You’re out of the way of the cars passing by like birds who don’t realize there’s a lion sitting in the middle of the street.  You tilt your head a little and wonder why that might be.  You’re still smiling, because you liked that motherfucker in the car.  You like most motherfuckers, but sometimes you forget what a cute motherfucker actually is.  You drift away for a while thinking about how strange it is that sometimes DNA gives you people who are so pretty, and when you come back around to the land of Main Street you find that there’s someone crouching beside the nubby motherfucker.  You don’t know how long you were all up in an airy space like that, but you know it’s been long enough that a tow truck has shown up and is beginning to ease apart the cars in the middle of the road.

The new motherfucker’s talking and all up and prodding at you like a real medical professional, and you feel your neck crane to the side to give him a miracle of a smile.  “Hey, bro, how are you doing all up where you at?”

He prods at you with a bit of force, and you feel a sharp pain in your chest, but you don’t mind much.  This is nothing in the scope of pain.  Besides, you have nothing against any of these motherfuckers.

“I am not your bro.  I hope you realize just how dumb a trick you pulled just now, what with gettin’ yourself hit by a car an all.  Every bystander within fifty miles is lookin’ at you an wonderin’ just what kind a flake you are.”

You’re liking the color all up in this guy's hair so much that you almost forget to listen to him as he talks.  “Hey, bro, what kind of a color is that?  Like a purple sort of thing, all up and sitting there at the top of the rainbow.  That’s cool that you’ve got it all motherfucking up and settled on your person like that.”

He just shakes his head.  “If you can stand, get yourself into the ambulance.  You got some major aches and pains on the way by the lookin’ a your ribs.  An it’s violet.”

“Right motherfucker, I’m all up and over that.  The violet and all.  I almost tried--”

“Just get in the ambulance.”

“You got it, bro.”

You get yourself up again, and you smile because you managed to get up in a vertical sort of zone without any major mishaps, but then you realize that it’s only because the nubby fellow is all up at your elbow.  You turn the smile to him, ready to thank him all nice and proper, but they shove you into the vehicle before you get any sort of chance.  The whole thing starts moving through traffic.  From there it’s just a cascade of questions from the purple guy, Mr. Nubby squeezed comfortably in a corner, and you just sit tight and answer like that was a thing you were destined to be doing all along.

“What’s your name?”

“Aw man, I all up and forgot that introductions are a thing.”

“I don’t want to know your name, you idiot.  I need to know if you hurt your head.”

“That’s all up and making so much sense, motherfucker.  I’m Gamzee Makara.  What’s your name?”  You hold out a hand, but he puts it back to your side with the sort of expression that makes you think he needs a break from life for a while.

“Eridan.  Does anythin’ hurt?”

“I got no complaints, man.  I’m all in a miraculous state of being.”

The paramedic rolled his eyes.  “So nothin’ hurts?  At all?”

“Aw, Eribro, there’s nothing but clouds all up in my bodily space right now.  I’m cooler than cool.”

“Why’m I gettin’ the message that you’re high off your ass?”

“If that’s the message that the world all up and decides to bestow, then I guess it would up and make sense, you know?”

“Let me try this again--are you high?”

The nubby guy leans forward, glaring down at you as you're laying there.  He’s got some mean eyebrows, all up and shelved over his dark eyes.  You suddenly feel like there would be nothing but disappointment all up in his face if you were to blurt out the honest truth right now, but your brother always told you that you answer truthfully to any of the medical profession that all be up asking questions.  They don’t know how to treat what they don’t got on knowing, is what he would say to you, and you smile a little.  “I’m up in the clouds, my brother.”

“An what clouds might those be?  Marijuana?”  Purple guy’s lip rises in disgust, but you pay no mind.

You roll your head to the side to keep your nubby bro within your sight, and say, “I’m all up and with this new thing, some kinda chill narcotics thing I got from my buddy Terecita.  She don’t shoot up, really, not like I do--she’s on the supply, you see?  She hates my guts, but there’s no matter in that.”

“Are you talkin’ about heroin?  Is that what it is?” the purple guy asks.

You keep staring at the nubby one as he closes his eyes, his frown deepening the longer you talk.  “Nah, not the heroin.  I don’t do that shit all the time, I just look for whatever she’s got, you know?  I’m all up and skipping around.”

“So what is it today?  Or do you even know?”

“This motherfucking wicked elixir, this thing she’s all on about, like an opioid thing.  She called it a… I’m not all up in a headspace to remember, really, but… oh nah wait, bro, I got it.  Thebaine something or other.  Like some sorta shakespearean brother’s motherfucking name.”

You get to the hospital quicker than you anticipated, and it’s a disappointment when the purple bro trades you off to another motherfucker who's got this wicked thing all going on with his tongue.  You get the idea that they’re not real buddies, what with the back and forth they go on with for a while, but you don’t think they really hate each other.  By now you’re starting to fizzle out a little bit.  You stay on the stretcher and press your hands to the sides of your head, digging your fingertips into your fug of knotted hair.  You don’t like how it feels to come down off of this new stuff.  Harsh-whimsies all around.  But even so, it isn’t so bad.  You smile to your nubby friend.  Even though now you’re starting to feel the deep ache in your ribs.  It’s nothing, compared to what could be.  Which is still nothing compared to what has been.


	2. Sitting in the Park

Your name is Rose Lalonde, and you are becoming increasingly more worried as each minute squeezes past your daintily manicured fingers.  You are sitting with a close friend in a park off of Main Street, your bag sitting in your lap as you gently brush a nail down the hem of your skirt.  The sound of his tapping heels beats into your head.  The number of times he runs his hand through his disheveled anime hair has been growing exponentially by the minute.  

You wish you had the strict morals required to leave him there alone, with his own terrible life choices, but your conscience has always been a bit counter-intuitive.  He’s waiting for drugs--the only reason you are still sitting beside him with your clutch in your lap is because you remember what it feels like, that biting edge between hits.  You remember how every insecurity was magnified a thousand times in that space torn out from the space that separated worlds.  You have made it a point to stay every time so that Dirk will never have to endure the indecency of being completely alone at his absolute worst.  You are, however, not sure how much longer Dirk can stand this.

“I’m sorry, Rose.  God, I’m sorry.  I can’t stop being sorry that you’re still here with me, god, how long has it been?”

You arch your lip, tilt your head, not looking directly at him.  You know what you would see--pain and suffering.  A dark place that you not only visited but lived in, months in the past now, sure, but it isn’t something that you really forget.  He’s living there now, in the shadows of a past life.  You wish you could hold him until the pain eases up, until he remembers what it’s like to live without the suction before each successive hit.  You, of course, can do no such thing.  You know full well that he would not appreciate it, and you respect his boundaries no matter the cost to your own mental health.  “Dirk.  How long have I known you?  You should understand by now that I’m hardly put out by such things, no matter how unfortunate.”

“You’re right, you’re right… I mean yeah, of course you are.”  He folds his arms around his torso, clutching his abdominal region and leaning forward over his knees.  He’s not doing so well.  His hands have been shaking for an hour now.  Whatever is going on on the distribution end… you don’t particularly care, but you’ve been hearing rumors anyway.  You can’t help but wonder just what it was that Terezi’s new wonder drug is.  Has Gamzee taken it?  Is that what is taking him so long to come around?  The poor kid has no sense of time on the best of days, but when you mix that with felony amounts of benzos, he is downright hard to keep track of.  

Gamzee Makara… now there is a character.  A ghost.  He lives on the streets, scraping by as a drug runner, but it’s obvious, at least to you, that he came from somewhere else.  You have your ideas, assumptions even, but he’s nearly impossible to pin down.  You’ve been trying for years.  Well, up until last December.  December 13th, the day you washed your hands of the dust on the streets and checked yourself into rehab.  You’ve been trying to keep everything to do with the inner-city drug culture at a safe distance since then, no matter how… intriguing the dynamics are.

Dirk shifts beside you, reminding you that now is not the time to be contemplating the multiple variables behind distribution in the drug trade.  You bring yourself back to the moment, flicking your white-bleached hair back from your pristine face.  It is another long moment before you glance over at the man beside you to gauge how well he’s doing.

All in all, it appears that he isn’t doing so hot at all.  He’s sweating through his t-shirt, even though it’s a balmy seventy outside.  He rocks forward, still clutching his stomach.  You know he’s dying of hunger right now.  How odd it is, that amphetamine withdrawal makes a person feel intense urges to both eat and sleep.  You weren’t much into stimulants when you were in the life--stimulants have a certain connotation that you just don’t like.  It manifests as a little blip in the brainwaves that say ‘you have something important to finish--you shouldn’t sleep until it’s done.’  That is the last thing you ever needed.  What you needed was not to be so high strung, you needed to be above the demanding world that was your mother’s every whim.

Dirk Strider, on the other hand… Mr. Strider had a chip on his shoulder since the moment he was born.  Born to a family of entrepreneurs, the youngest of four children, Dirk was always in last place.  You suppose that was the design--two older brothers who scored millions in media and entertainment and an older sister who was a hacker so brilliant that she was hired by the white house itself was a bar cemented in the upper echelons of ability.  Too high to overcome, it seemed.  You wish you could have seen Dirk Strider in his heyday--back when he was producing robotic contracts two a week, upgrading his infrastructures like there was no tomorrow.  But, according to your sources, he simply stopped one day.  He hit a rut.  He had nowhere to go from there.  And so he began to fret, to worry, to look for something to help.  And that was when he found black beauties, a mixture of speed and dextro that ultimately caused his downfall.  The beginning of the end.

You suppose it could be considered poetic, if looked at through the correct filter.  The reality is not so rosy, however.  As you sit you lean a little to the side, just barely brush against his shirt, and you are rewarded with the electrified feel of his jumping muscles just beyond your touch.  He’s bone tired, so exhausted that he’s hardly holding himself up.  He’s probably been awake some fifty odd hours.  This isn’t as bad as he has been before, you remind yourself.  He’s been through worse.  The day that Jake left him… and he refused to stop pacing except to sit beside you on the futon and use your needle to push more liquid energy into his veins… and he didn’t stop until seventy-nine hours had gone past and he was wearing down his very bones as he paced back and forth… and you had to slip nyquil into the juice that you begged him to drink.  You wish you could change the fact that he feels so inferior to the rest of the world, to his family, to his friends.  You wish you could make him see the light like you did.  But you can’t.  So you sit tight and continue to wait with him, nudging your water bottle toward him every few minutes so that he won’t forget about it.

You have sat there for two hours and sixteen minutes before anyone comes, and it isn’t who you expect.  In fact, it’s the person you least expect.

“Jade.  Honey, what is it?” you ask, standing quickly and stepping forward.  You know unadulterated hero-worship when you see it in the eyes of a youngster just entering high school, and it would not do to have the girl come face to face with a Strider who is losing his edge.  She may be running marijuana to the college kids around town for Terezi, but Terezi has always been very careful to keep her away from anything more vicious than a few kids getting high on their night off.  There must be something very off in the chain of command if Jade is being sent back to you instead of one of the junkies.

“Rose!  I knew you were around.  Have you seen Gamzee?  I need to find him, Terezi’s looking all over the place.  I think she might be worried about him, although she won’t tell me, of course.  The poor thing is in love with him, I’d bet on it any day--Dirk!  Hey, Dirky!  How’s it going?”

You just barely sigh.  Dirk looks up and manages to crack a smile through his deathly pallor and sweat.  “Hey there, Jade.  How’s my favorite apprentice?”

She stops to pout.  “You haven’t brought me anything new to work with in aaages.  I’ve made sixteen of those little dogbots.  If you wanted me to make you an army of mechanical dogs all you had to do was ask, silly!”

“And miss out on this prize-winning lecture?  No way.”  Dirk laughs, the sound hoarse and scratchy, and you offer him more water, which he takes.

“How long has Gamzee been missing?” you ask, settling back on the bench and splaying your fingers over your skirt.  Dirk hangs at your elbow, his eyes huge and shining as Jade tilts her head to think.

“Well, she gave him something new around noon because he was wandering around and getting in her way, and he seemed to like it.  So I guess maybe he took off on his bike?  And no one’s seen him since.  I guess… Dirk?”

You let out a dainty little sigh as Dirk tosses the water bottle at the ground, standing up and beginning to walk away.  “Sorry Jade, I don’t think we can help you at this juncture in time.  Maybe you should speak with Damara, seeing as she and Gamzee are so… close.  Excuse me.”  You quickly retrieve your bottle and trot up behind Dirk, who is striding away with more energy than he has shown in nigh over three hours.  “Dirk.  Please, wait up a moment.”

“Why?  There’s nothing coming of this.  I’ve wasted half your day.  I just want to go home and… and sleep.”

You catch the slight hiccup in his voice, but pretend you didn’t.  You know he doesn’t want to sleep--he never does.  It is an immutable fact of life that Dirk Strider never sleeps, at least not without a fuss.  “At least text me when you wake up.  So that I can find you some dinner.  All right?”

He heaves a sigh, running a hand through the hair that stands up from the base of his neck by the force of his cowlicks.  “Sure, Rose.  Whatever you need.  Have I ever told you that you sound like Roxy sometimes?”

You smile at that and tilt your chin at him imploringly.  “Is that so, Strider?”

**Author's Note:**

> It's probably going to become very obvious very soon, but in order to make this work the way I wanted I completely disregarded the family structures that are usually projected. While Gamzee, Kurloz, The Grand Highblood, and Goatdad are all related in this AU, you'll find that some of the families are kind of haphazard (Equius and Jane are a couple and Kanaya is their child? Hmm). Please just go with it--there is a reason for everything.


End file.
